Last year, the first-ever World Book Night was held in the UK and Ireland—not quite “the world” but, here at Likely Stories, we certainly applaud the lofty ambition. The stated goal was to give away one million books to “light or non-readers” and, by most accounts, the night was a resounding success. This year, WBN will add two more countries to its efforts at global domination, Germany and the U.S. (Think of us as part of the Axis of Literacy.)

The basic idea is that ordinary people (the definition of which includes librarians and even writers) hand out books they love to people who might not otherwise read them. Want to join in the fun? The deadline is February 1, so apply today!

The list of books to be given away on April 23 includes one that is a personal favorite of mine, Dave Eggers’ Zeitoun. For the complete list, click here.

Although I confess that I’m a bit nervous about guessing who might be a light or non-reader (“You sir! You look as though you are in dire need of the magic of books!” “Just because I drive a taxi, you don’t think I read books?”) I plan to apply. And, if selected, I’ll share my experience right here at Likely Stories.

Savvy readers will notice a slight change in this week’s heading. Today we’re shaking up Webcomics Wednesdays by featuring an initiative that will eventually be on the web (and elsewhere). Comics Uniting Nations, a partnership between Reading with Pictures, Project Everyone, and PCI Media (an organization dedicated to producing “entertainment-education”) plans to use the “universal visual […]

Cindy: I know a stack of librarians who will love An Ambush of Tigers: A Wild Gathering of Collective Nouns (2015), by Betsy R. Rosenthal. We’ve read a few collective noun books before and Lynn and I are fans of them all. There’s something about the tidy organizing that must appeal to the librarians in […]

Cindy: Please wash your hands before you read this post! Measles, whooping cough, and now an outbreak of typhus … in youth literature, that is! A few years ago, Lynn and I posted about a fictional Typhoid Mary story, Deadly (2011) by Julie Chibbaro, and I was intrigued about Mary Mallon and her real story. This year […]

Savvy readers will notice a slight change in this week’s heading. Today we’re shaking up Webcomics Wednesdays by featuring an initiative that will eventually be on the web (and elsewhere). Comics Uniting Nations, a partnership between Reading with Pictures, Project Everyone, and PCI Media (an organization dedicated to producing “entertainment-education”) plans to use the “universal visual […]

Cindy: I know a stack of librarians who will love An Ambush of Tigers: A Wild Gathering of Collective Nouns (2015), by Betsy R. Rosenthal. We’ve read a few collective noun books before and Lynn and I are fans of them all. There’s something about the tidy organizing that must appeal to the librarians in […]

Cindy: Please wash your hands before you read this post! Measles, whooping cough, and now an outbreak of typhus … in youth literature, that is! A few years ago, Lynn and I posted about a fictional Typhoid Mary story, Deadly (2011) by Julie Chibbaro, and I was intrigued about Mary Mallon and her real story. This year […]